You like playing a video game where you are given the freedom to move about the entire game world. This is how many new games are designed. In these games or even linear games, map trackers are very important to help keep the game moving and prevent the story or the player from getting stuck for too long. The ability to map track is important for a variety of reasons that help keep the player engaged through the game.
Easier Navigation in New Locations
Map trackers in the world of gaming are a very essential part of every gaming experience. This is particularly important when it comes to traversing open-world games because those worlds allow the player so much freedom and flexibility. Players finding new maps difficult to traverse so having access to trackers allow people to better move about in the unfamiliar terrain they find themselves in. Without map trackers, it would be difficult to explore freely new locations and even navigate through areas you return to. This difficulty could translate to problematic user experience and lower the playability of a game, resulting in negative player feedback.
Quests, and Items
Trackers are a good tool to incorporate in your game to give your player’s direction. These will help the user experience, guiding them through quests or items that game designers see as necessities for the player to stumble across. These trackers can provide players a guideline to follow to ensure they have the most beneficial experience as they move from location to location. This is done in a way to keep them moving in a direction and not get stuck too long with one part or area. Their quests should increase in difficulty creating a pace that players will feel just enough challenge in but not be overwhelmed with enemies or mechanics they are not yet prepared for. Map tracking for quests and items also allows players just enough freedom between points to experience the game without it feeling too linear, and can provide simultaneous points of interest, giving the player more control of how they approach their playthrough.
Progress
Map trackers are very important for games as it helps keep players progressing. Without a proper tracker, players can find themselves without a purpose or way to grow within the game world. These trackers are also important for driving a narrative, especially in open-world games. These points of interest will help forge the story for the player, helping them evolve and develop through more playtime, getting stronger and more powerful with certain levels and story elements locked until the player has reached these key areas on the tracker. Your character’s story and narrative will take part in the experience subconsciously as you progress through tracker milestones.
Real-World Gaming
Map trackers are not only a tool that is important in open-world gaming, but with new innovations in the form of augmented reality games, games that use real-world settings using your camera phone, tracking can be crucial to a step into the future of gaming as well. Augmented reality takes players and brings the game to you, into your surroundings. It might be fun to mess around with augmented reality, but trackers will be important when it comes to pushing the game’s direction, giving you a purpose and reason to play.
Ever-changing world and future tech
With more and more powerful computers and gaming machines, the games themselves are improving. What this means for an open-world game and map tracking is that so much more memory can be accessed and kept in the game. So your actions will mean that much more when you move from place to place, as you might leave a city in a state that was better or worse than when you first got there. This progression in technology can lead to a progression in the gaming experience and narrative, as you are having a much bigger role in it as your actions hold so much more consequence to them.
Map tracking is very important in video games. Whether it is an open world, sandbox type of game or a linear, story-driven one, the importance of map tracking is one of pacing and progression. Without the proper tools to track your character and the world around you, you might find yourself with the unusual problem of having too much freedom and not enough direction. There is also a subtle line between being too forceful and giving the player not enough control or not being present enough and giving them too much freedom. The best map trackers do a great job balancing that.
